Year of the Snake

Good morning, and happy Chinese New Year to all! Though it's my fourth CNY in HK, I'll finally be checking out the parade for the first time. Looking forward to the festivities!

10:30 AM  chinese new year, festivities, Hong Kong, parade, year of the snake  No comments

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shanghai recap

the ZAO girls in XTD, all bundled up!

when i first started living in hk,  returning from trips overseas and descending that ramp when you first deplane at hong kong international airport always felt slightly smothering, like an invisible blanket of humidity. somewhere at the 1 year mark, a switch flipped and this hint of mildew became welcoming, like home. now in year 3.5, combined with returning from china, i can't tell you how amazing HK heat, humidity and pollution felt compared to where we spent the last few days.

newly opened K-11 art mall on huai hai lu

not to knock on shanghai, of course. i had great hotpot (hotpot king, yum), decent chicken caesar salad (waga's in pudong), and its share of fancy overpriced yet mediocre restaurants (tapas at unico, what?).  randomly ended up at 10+ person dinners each night i went out, perhaps indicative of shanghai's expat culture vs. hk ... or maybe just a function of my tenure. of course these were all asides, as ling and i were in town to meet investors and met some techies, designers, restauranteurs, and even a club boss along the way.

renovated warehouse turned co-working space people squared, with great layout & funky vibe. 

in general, we found that people were willing to take random cold meetings. on the investor side though the meetings were all set up beforehand, and through referrals. we jam-packed our days on purpose in the interest of productivity, and to my satisfaction, got every meeting that i had hoped for. some meetings turned out less than savory, others waxed hopeful...but nothing we haven't encountered before. i have found that it matters less than you think, whether the meeting is set up as a referral or a cold call...anything could happen. so it's not hard to get a meeting. people aren't meeting you to be nice or because they don't value their time; they're meeting you for your potential value-add to their lives. plain and simple. which lends naturally to the commercial qualities and no-holds-barred ways of doing business in china. it's one way of doing things...not sure if it's my favorite, but it clearly works for some who have cashed out on their massive success there.

view of the bund from PuXi side 

being starved of facebook and our usual social media outlets but also being too cheap to roam, free VPN'd wifi was a real treat whenever possible. the public wifi in shanghai was annoying though, requiring SMS to local carriers for two-fold password login. why is that so necessary.  

this is the center of town. yes, really

while it was a good reminder of the true "wild wild east", we are quite happy to be back at home base. no more sub 10 degree weather, less deadly pollution indices, uncensored and high-speed internet. the journey continues, as we plan events and secure partnerships into the year of the snake.

6:25 PM  China, cold, coworking space, entrepreneur, investors, meetings, restaurant, shanghai, startups, whiskey  No comments

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